The Archive is a searchable database providing full bibliographic references for published and unpublished groundwater literature about Africa, including reports, journal articles, conference papers and maps. For many of the documents, the Archive links to a full text document freely available to download. If the document is not freely available, a link is provided to an online abstract where possible.

This archive of groundwater literature for Africa was developed as part of the Africa Groundwater Atlas project, through the Unlocking the Potential for Groundwater for the Poor (UPGro) research program.

UPGro is jointly funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) (UK Aid), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The program focuses on improving the evidence base around groundwater availability and management in sub-Saharan Africa to enable developing countries and partners in sub-Saharan Africa to use groundwater in a sustainable way in order to benefit the poor.

This archive of groundwater literature is related to all of Africa, including Saharan Africa, searchable by country and keywords and a web-based atlas summarizing the hydrogeology of each African country in maps and text.

The archive currently contains 6,884 references related to groundwater in Africa, including unpublished reports, manuals, maps, journal articles and conference papers. Some of the documents derive from groundwater exploration, research and development projects on which the British Geological Survey (BGS) worked from the 1970s to the present day, often in collaboration with other national and international organisations. They have tried to make as many documents as possible freely available to download, where copyright restrictions allow.